Tag Archives: certainty

I spent most of my free time over the past six years writing a collection of six novels. I’d never written a book before and, now that I’m finishing the last one, I’m starting to puzzle through what possessed me to do such a thing.

Part of the answer lies in something I wrote today to put at the end of the sixth book to explain to any curious reader who had stuck with me exactly why I called this collection of books 46. Ascending.

Here is how I explained it.

It is an I Ching hexagram.

It is what I came up with when I decided that my six proposed books could be made into an I Ching hexagram. Those with a female protagonist would have two lines and those with a male protagonist a single line and book one would be at the bottom and book six at the top because I was pretty sure that was how you were supposed to do it. I thought it was a cool idea.

The lines make Sheng, the I Ching hexagram number 46, as I discovered when I looked up the above cool idea.

Sheng answered the question that bothered me most. The question was not “will my books make money?” or “will I sell a lot of books?” It wasn’t even “will these be good books?” or “will I enjoy writing them?” Those would all have been fine questions. But, this I Ching hexagram answered my question “should I do this or not?”

In other words, everything I read about the I Ching hexagram told me loud and clear “write the damn books.” So I did.

Was the universe talking to me? Was I talking to myself? Am I lucky I didn’t put the lines in the reverse order? Those are all great questions. But the one I started to consider was how well did the hexagram fit in with the books themselves.

If you asked me what this collection of books was about, from the beginning I would have told you it was about how all humans have so much more potential than they realize. We can improve, we can rise, we can ascend. Climb the mountain. Move towards the light to the south. You know. Grow.

So this collection of books is named after an I Ching hexagram that not only got me off my butt and writing, but just happened to perfectly describe what it was I was trying to say. Go figure. At the least, it seemed reasonable to name the collection of books after it.

What I don’t address at the end of my novel is the question “did writing the books make me happy?” It’s an important question, but it’s important to me, and not really to my readers. That makes it a more appropriate topic for my blog.

Well …

I can tell you that I wrote these books filled with a sense of energy and purpose unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. Many days, writing wasn’t just what I wanted to do, it was all I wanted to do. It was an addiction, an obsession, and a nepenthe against all the world’s ills. I let it consume me, and I enjoyed the ride.

I emerge at the other end, tireder, older, fifteen pounds heavier and with six years of my life mysteriously gone. But, I was lucky enough to have five people in this world who loved me throughout this process and I was lucky enough to have a way to make a living while I wrote that kept serious worries away. Neither is to be taken lightly and for both I count my blessings.

Everybody always tells you to pursue your passion in life. I don’t think that “everybody” has much of an idea of all that really entails. It changes you in ways you do and don’t like. It’s not always fun. It doesn’t always turn out well, certainly not in the Hollywood kind of way.

But once you’ve done it, you can’t imagine not having done it, if that makes any sense. Like not doing it wasn’t even an option, or at least it shouldn’t have been.

Is that happiness? I’m not sure, but I think it might be something even better.

Lately I have been absorbed by the idea that each of us is less an entity and more a sort of probability cloud. Those closest to me cannot say with absolute certainty how I will behave under a certain set of circumstances. They can, however, make a good guess and they will be right more often than not.

Does not being totally predictable make me wishy-washy? Inconsistent? Or does it confirm that I am multifaceted and even intriguingly complex? It probably depends on who you ask. The fact is, none of us are the same person day in and day out. We have our moods. Wisps of memories become unexpected triggers and we say things that are rather out of character. We love papaya but for some reason cannot stand the taste of mango. Let’s face it, we are each kind of sort of a certain way, but not always, and never completely.

I like this idea of a probability cloud as it applies to all kinds of things. d4 has forced me to think hard about the future, and to speculate on the extent to which it is firmly fixed and the degree to which it is ruled by wild chaos. Neither end of the spectrum feels like truth, and I go with a universe in which order and the unexpected strive for balance. I think it has to do with the ways in which the macroscopic world mirrors the microscopic and perhaps even the telescopic as we all go whirling through space kind of sort of in a particular location, moving in a certain direction, but never absolutely so.

The other day my husband did something odd. I don’t remember what it was, partly because it is his personality to behave a little erratically. What I do remember is his response to my “what was that about?”

“I want to keep you on your toes,” he laughed. “I don’t ever want to become too predictable.” He needn’t worry, he never will. Remaining hard to predict is part of who he is. I wouldn’t expect anything else, even though maybe every once in awhile I should.